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July 1, 2013

10 Best Wealth Manager Logos: Advisors Behind the Winners

The advisors behind the winning logos talk about how they chose the logos and how they market their firms

With 2,051 votes tallied, readers voting on AdvisorOne have selected the 10 Best Wealth Manager Logos out of 25 finalists. The finalists were selected by the editorial staff of the Investment Advisor Group—the editors and art directors of AdvisorOne and Research and Investment Advisor magazines. The winners comprised firms with staff sizes from 227 down to just one, but all came up big regarding their logos’ appeal to readers — and, therefore, potential clients.

The 10 winners were also featured in the July issues of Research and Investment Advisor. This expanded Web-only version includes photos of the winning advisors and their answers to questions about how they chose their logo and how they market their firm.

The intent of our original slideshow on AdvisorOne, Our 20 Favorite Top Wealth Manager Logos, and the subsequent readers’ poll, was to help educate advisors on one way to stand out to both current clients and prospects, immediately and directly, in collateral marketing material—and we hope this has helped out a bit.

You can also check out detailed information on some of these firms, and other helpful information, at AdvisorOne’s 2012 Top Wealth Managers landing page.

The credit for our logo goes to the graphic design genius of artist and friend, Jordan Ballard. He is a gifted designer! As for our tagline, “Building Wealth. Financial Health,” I wanted it to be short and sweet, while encompassing what long-term investors desire most: Growing and maintaining their wealth so they may fulfill a healthy financial future!

How big a role has marketing played in your firm’s success?

Marketing has helped us gain trust among new clients and establish the Percension footprint as a premier, up-and-coming advisory practice. Specifically, as wealth shifts from baby boomers to younger generations digital media becomes more instrumental, which we leverage to inform and educate. Investors today want real-time, compelling information that is easy to consume. We will always explore new technologies and marketing channels to grow our brand as a knowledge resource. Social media combined with our unique content enables us to connect with investors. This has been a major catalyst for Percension’s steady growth.

We introduced our current logo and tagline in 2010, replacing the original logo and tagline we had when RMB was founded in 2005. It was an evolution rather than a revolution; we felt it was important for our brand to stay fresh and to reflect new realities. The logo uses a sturdy, photo-realistic oak tree as the central image, which we believe reinforces our brand vision (to be the custodian of our clients’ trust) and values (authenticity, excellence, rigor, solutions, and results). Our tagline (“Invested in your growth”) is also rooted in the firm’s vision and values and further supports our brand promise (to take care of each client’s big picture as if it were our own).

How big a role has marketing played in your firm’s success?

Our success is attributable to much more than traditional marketing; we’ve been fortunate to have grown primarily based on referrals from existing clients. However, we believe that organic growth has been supported by our branding, which has many different components that we’ve been very focused on since even before our firm officially launched. This includes tangible identity elements that we can control (like a logo and tagline) as well as abstract elements that are much more difficult to control (like the way clients perceive our brand). So, we strive to create alignment among employees around the foundational elements of our brand—primarily our vision and values—and to reinforce those elements in the business and operational decisions we make. We believe this focus has helped to enrich our clients’ experience with us and thus has contributed to our success.

The words in our company name and logo, OakPath, represent the strength, stability and trust of an oak tree and our promise to take our clients down the path toward financial freedom. For example, think of a new client’s retirement plan as an acorn. We take that acorn and care for it, nourish it, until it grows into a strong oak tree. We are engineered to grow only when we help our customers succeed first.

How big a role has marketing played in your firm’s success?

Marketing has played a large role in our success. We utilize electronic media such as our website, a promotional video and e-newsletter, as well as social media tools like LinkedIn and Twitter. We also use good old fashioned direct mail to target prospective clients. We are currently exploring new ways to expand our digital marketing strategy.

With a focused business model set squarely on the unique needs of those approaching and entering retirement we chose a logo that incorporated an integral component of our proprietary EASE-Process in a visual way. The pyramid stems from a graphic that we use to categorize expenses into Core, Joy and Legacy and then link them to the income sources and assets of our clients.

When it came to the tagline we wanted to focus on the facts. In our world of retirement advisement we guide our clients, but they qualify the parameters of their particular circumstance. We reviewed three rounds of tagline options that we felt conveyed that fact prior to choosing “Define your future.” We felt that it best incorporated the idea that we work with clients in an interactive fashion where they participate in the planning process through our extensive use of “what-if scenarios.” We spent many months deliberating with our team before making our final choice on both logo and tagline. As surprising as it sounds making the final decision on our logo and tagline was one of the most challenging and fulfilling marketing choices we have made to date, and we wouldn't change a thing.

How big a role has marketing played in your firm’s success?

Marketing has played an evolving, but critical role in Retirement Security Center’s success. Our vision for the future is to capitalize on the amazing momentum we have gained with our new logo, website and an inspirational piece called the RSC Doctrine. We have designed a number of unique marketing strategies that will benefit our clients and prospects. We plan to implement these strategies over the next year as we “Define the future” of our enterprise, just as we do for our clients.

For this startup, the Women’s Wealth & Wisdom logo was designed distinctively feminine with the intent to differentiate our firm from images associated with more gender-neutral firms.

How big a role has marketing played in your firm’s success?

Once we attract the attention from our target market to the logo, the hope is that she will recognize that the company’s name is directed at her and become inspired to know about the rest of the branding and marketing message, which is where the real substance is. In marketing to this niche, more precisely, senior-level executive women and women business owners, we must take a sophisticated and educational approach to engage them to the next level, keeping it fresh and relevant to her needs.

Our logo represents a sun moving toward its zenith and reflects the elevation aspect of our tagline. We chose the tagline, “Elevating financial strategies,” because we felt it most accurately fit our vision of creating an unprecedented level of care for advisors and their clients. Stratos is a firm designed for advisors, by advisors and we work hard to facilitate the success of our advisors by getting them set up with their business and offering them ownership in the firm. Advisors find it rewarding to own equity in the Stratos brand as we have set an elevated bar in building an intelligent, qualified team that has the capacity to develop innovative strategies for our clients.

How big a role has marketing played in your firm’s success?

Marketing, in conjunction with public relations, has played a major role in accurately communicating our brand message to the right audiences. While most of our recruitment efforts in the past have been through referrals, we have recently taken steps to bolster our marketing to help connect with prospective advisors. We have grown exponentially since our inception in early 2009 and plan on ramping up our marketing and PR efforts in coming months so we can continue sharing our unique story and company news to help set ourselves apart in the financial industry.

One of our expert marketing teams, Marie Swift and Impact Communications handle PR and marketing support and helped create this great logo; and the team at Jameson Marketing, based in Oklahoma City, helped us develop the name ALIGN.

How big a role has marketing played in your firm’s success?

To us, the best marketing is to do great work for our clients, keep them informed, provide results and offer the same level of service excellence to the people our clients refer to us. Besides that, marketing has not played a crucial role in our practice, because, like most other advisors, we are not very good at it. However, we have spent time improving our marketing efforts over the years with the assistance of expert marketing teams, Impact and Jameson, with the focus on increasing brand awareness, improving our communications with clients, improving our online presence, and providing more informative client events.

We decided upon “Investing for all seasons” because we advise our clients to prepare for every season of life, including when they’re living and healthy, when they face a disability and when they want to establish a legacy. We also aim to advise them through every season of their life and, because we’re based in Wisconsin, a four-season area, we also thought the slogan was appropriate for us. Lastly, in 2011 we launched a mutual fund called the Ginkgo Multi-Strategy Fund and we wanted our slogan to complement this Fund. The logo is both a rising W to reflect optimism and a rising market and because our firm name begins with a W. The gradient colors are to reflect the seasons of the year and of a life.

How big a role has marketing played in your firm’s success?

Marketing has played a key role in our success and we are always expanding our efforts. In a referral-dependent business, we have enjoyed reaching out via social media, but we’re also expanding old-school efforts like the classes we teach and the seminars we host.

We understand that the families we serve desire to leave a legacy of growth and security for future generations. Because of this, our team strives to employ wealth management strategies that work well for our clients, while also keeping the interests of their children and grandchildren in mind. Our tagline and the image of the tree incorporated into our logo helps communicate this idea; as your family tree grows and expands, we’ll be there to offer guidance and professional advice.

How big a role has marketing played in your firm’s success?

At Family Financial Partners, our philosophy is that successful financial planning begins with a personal, one-on-one conversation. Our marketing strategies operate under this philosophy in that they help to facilitate an open dialogue. By using different types of media (social media, blog, website, direct mail), we are able to engage a broad audience, maintain strong relationships with our current client families, and forge new bonds with the next generation. Overall, a strong marketing strategy with a clear message has enabled our team to expand our reach and build connections with families who are striving to achieve their financial goals.

We are currently in the third year of a five year plan to “rebrand” the firm. The first step was to rename the firm; I had an idea of the message I wanted to convey but it took over a year of research and help from professional designers before we finally felt we had a name, logo and tagline that best represented the firm’s service and culture.

How big a role has marketing played in your firm’s success?

We continue to expand and leverage our marketing strategies as we feel this is a key element in developing relationships within the community as well as with other professionals. As Wikipedia says, “keystone” is the central supporting element of a larger structure; StoneCrest Wealth Management represents the “keystone” on the path to successfully reaching your financial goals and objectives.